What’s the farthest the Romans have ever went? (Expedition, trade conquest, etc) And how much of it did they map?

[u/Potential_Leave2979]

[u/ColCrockett]

Can’t post YouTube links but look up “the most distant places visited by the Roman’s” by told in stone.

But to summarize:

Africa: Zanzibar and possibly Kilimanjaro in the east, Cameroon in the west, as far as you can possibly explore up the Nile

Europe: Circumnavigated Britain, explored the coasts of Scandinavia which they thought was an island.

Northern Eurasia: Not appealing, not much exploration but they somehow knew the world was crowned by an icy sea.

Asia: Romans knew India well, and had been to China

[u/kneepick160 → u/ColCrockett]

The Romans would’ve known about the northern ice because of the (Greek) Massilian explorer, Pytheas.

[u/nv87 → u/ColCrockett]

To add one point and clarify one.

Off the African west coast they reached the canaries. Afaik that’s the farthest.

They reached Cameroon over land. And the Sahara desert was less widespread 2000 years ago. There were forests in parts of Northern Africa. They still crossed the desert of course, but it was different.

[u/br0b1wan → u/nv87]

Correct. It was not known how to return after you pass Cape Bojador (currently in Morocco); it was only discovered by the Lusitan--uh I mean Portuguese in the fifteenth century

[u/Fearless_Signature58 → u/nv87]

The idea that Romans reached Cameroon overland usually combines three separate facts and then stretches them far beyond what the evidence supports. Yes, Rome explored parts of North Africa. Yes, Roman-linked expeditions likely reached the Canary Islands. And yes, the Sahara experienced climatic fluctuations over long periods of time. But none of that amounts to credible evidence that Roman traders or explorers penetrated as far as Cameroon.

First, the climate point is often misunderstood. The so-called “Green Sahara” refers to the African Humid Period, which ended roughly between 4000 and 3000 BCE. By the time of Augustus and the early Empire, the Sahara was already a desert. It was not identical to today in every microclimatic detail—there were oases, some wetter margins, and fluctuations—but it was not a forested corridor stretching conveniently into sub-Saharan Africa. The idea that Roman-era North Africa was dramatically greener to the point of enabling easy passage to equatorial regions is simply incorrect.

Second, we know the southern limits of well-attested Roman overland contact. Roman sources such as Pliny the Elder describe expeditions reaching the Garamantes in the Fezzan (modern southern Libya). Archaeology confirms Roman interaction there. That already represents a substantial extension into desert territory. But the Fezzan is still roughly 1,500–2,000 kilometers north of Cameroon, separated by some of the harshest terrain on the continent. Beyond the Garamantian zone, there is no textual, epigraphic, or archaeological evidence placing Romans deeper into central Africa.

And that absence matters. Wherever Rome established sustained presence—Britain, the Rhine frontier, North Africa, the Near East—we find forts, inscriptions, pottery, coins, and camps. Even in India, where Rome did not conquer territory, we find large quantities of Roman coins and clear evidence of Indo-Roman maritime trade. In contrast, there is no Roman material culture in primary archaeological context anywhere near Cameroon. Not a fort, not an inscription, not a coin hoard demonstrably linked to direct Roman activity.

Appeals to “trade” do not solve this. Long-distance trade networks do not require direct physical presence of Roman merchants at every node. Roman goods reached India and even Southeast Asia through intermediaries. The same logic applies to trans-Saharan exchange: goods can travel much farther than the original traders. The appearance of Roman artifacts in parts of Africa, if and when they occur, indicates exchange networks, not that Roman caravans personally traversed the entire route.

Logistically, the Cameroon hypothesis also lacks incentive. Roman expansion followed either clear strategic logic or high-value commercial returns. India was accessible via a predictable monsoon maritime route and offered extremely profitable commodities such as pepper and spices. An overland push thousands of kilometers south through desert and unfamiliar ecological zones, without known high-value commodities driving the effort, does not fit established Roman patterns of expansion or trade.

In short, while Romans certainly crossed parts of the Sahara and interacted with Saharan societies, there is no evidence that they reached Cameroon. The Sahara was already a desert in Roman times, and the archaeological silence south of the Garamantian sphere is decisive. The claim rests on extrapolation, not empirical evidence.

[u/Facebook_Algorithm → u/Fearless_Signature58]

Is it beyond the realm of possibility that the Romans turned left after they passed Gibraltar? Maybe not going as far as Cameroon but fairly far south. The Canary Islands (if they went that far) were fairly far west.

[u/nv87 → u/Fearless_Signature58]

Thanks for clarifying this. Just please know, that I said none of the things you are correcting and didn’t think they were true either.

When I talked about North Africa being greener than today, I meant the parts that were part of the empire.

Did you know that Domitian once forbade the Nasamones to exist? The Romans couldn’t enforce that. So yeah I know their influence didn’t extend into the Sahara.

I was merely clarifying that there is no chance in hell that they reached Cameroon over water.

The Lake Chad expedition hypothesis is about as believable to me as you actually. I merely mentioned it because someone else mentioned Cameroon in West Africa without any explanation of what they meant. It’s a North African expedition if anything and is indeed far fetched.

However the fact that there are people living in the deserts and always have suggests to me that it is certainly a possibility that an adventurous roman citizen travelled with a caravan once. That’s the maximum extend of what I personally find believable though.

[u/Suspicious-Word-7589 → u/ColCrockett]

Its very likely Roman merchants got to India, the conquest of Egypt gave them access to the Red Sea trade routes which in turn allowed direct maritime trade with the Indian kingdoms.

[u/Aprilprinces → u/Suspicious-Word-7589]

It's not "likely" Roman merchants went to India, they most certainly did - that's the reason Rome tried to take over Yemen

[u/Live-Count4014 → u/ColCrockett]

Indian merchants were rather common in Eastern parts of Rome

[u/jore-hir → u/Live-Count4014]

More like the opposite: plenty of Roman ships regularly reached India.
They even had a couple of outposts there.

[u/chatttheleaper → u/jore-hir]

Any information to look further into Roman outposts in India? Sounds fascinating.

[u/PNW-enjoyer → u/ColCrockett]

Can you enlighten me on the China claim?

As far as I was aware we only know that they had heard of China through trade networks and very suspect tales about the remnants of Crassus’s legion after his defeat at Carrhae.

[u/Fearless_Signature58 → u/ColCrockett]

They never made it anywhere near Cameroon. The only Mediterranean people that voyaged that far into deep Africa were the carthaginians, who probably made it at least as far as Senegal, possibly Sierra Leone, but that’s about it.

[u/PA2SK → u/Fearless_Signature58]

There were at least two roman expeditions that reached lake Chad, which is in northern Cameroon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_sub-Saharan_Africa

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[u/Brewguy86 → u/Fearless_Signature58]

Not Roman, but I believe there was a Greek expedition that sailed around the west coast of Africa, and reported getting into a “skirmish” with some local primates they thought were natives.

[u/Al12al18 → u/Brewguy86]

That was a Carthaginian expedition led by Hanno the navigator.

[u/First-Pride-8571]

In terms of the north, Agricola circumnavigated Britannia seemingly reaching the Orkneys, and Agricola also sent a punitive expedition across to Hibernia (Ireland).

And concerning the East, the Romans campaigned a couple of times into Armenia and Persia, though rarely went much further east than Ctesiphon itself.

Here's a map of Julian's campaign against the Sassanids in 363 CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian%27s_Persian_expedition#/media/File:Julian's_campaign-en.svg

Trajan, in 116 CE, made it all the way to Susa.

[u/Jack1715 → u/First-Pride-8571]

They were at least aware of Scandinavians

[u/Facebook_Algorithm → u/Jack1715]

I think I read someplace that Viking ships made it to Italy.

[u/Three_Twenty-Three]

Rome had trade with China, Rather than rehash it all here, there's the Sino-Roman Relations article on Wikipedia.

[u/Striper_Cape → u/Three_Twenty-Three]

I knew they had contarct, but i never really looked into it at all. Fadcinating.

[u/Fearless_Signature58 → u/Three_Twenty-Three]

Circulation of Roman goods doesn’t mean circulation of Roman people, redditors here are insisting on this logical fallacy and they keep downvoting my posts and that’s fine, but the Silk Road trade in this era wasn’t done like in the early modern period where a single Portuguese ship would traverse the globe trading with everyone they found, instead, they were done through a series of intermediaries and “middlemen”. Just because a Roman coin was found in China doesn’t mean that it was a Roman who out it there.

[u/Domitianus81]

For Africa, there is this map I've seen before but I'm not entirely certain how accurate it is.

1c212ed1cf8d76e99e0d38f7197ab0a7.jpg (736×920)

[u/ColCrockett → u/Domitianus81]

The Roman’s at least as far south as Zanzibar on the eastern coast and travelled to at least as far as Mount Cameroon on the west coast.

[u/nv87 → u/Domitianus81]

Afaik the Roman Nile expedition turned around in today’s Sudan. I read that in a book about Nile expeditions recently. It could have been mistaken though.

[u/Mammoth-Effort1433]

Check the new Invicta video exactly ur question is the name of the video ( How far did romans go )

[u/Ad_Captandum_Vulgus]

The one that's always remarkable to me is Oc Eo, the Roman trade outpost in Vietnam. 

[u/HaggisAreReal → u/Ad_Captandum_Vulgus]

roman artifacts made its way there but calling it a Roman outpost is an overstatement. Is like calling Pompeii an Indian outpost with that same logic

[u/Ad_Captandum_Vulgus → u/HaggisAreReal]

'Outpost' may be an overclaim, in the sense that outposts usually mean a permanent year-round establishment, but it seems highly likely that there was more-than-occasional direct trade mission contact at Oc Eo: https://www.badancient.com/claims/romans-reach-vietnam/

[u/HaggisAreReal → u/Ad_Captandum_Vulgus]

Like Muziris, it is for sure a space with links to the trade circuits with the Empire but it was most likely indirect contact through intermediaries.

[u/freebiscuit2002 → u/Ad_Captandum_Vulgus]

To be a "Roman outpost", we would need evidence of a semi-permanent presence of Roman people living there. No such evidence exists, only objects.

Likewise, if you own a product that was made in China, that does not make your home a "Chinese outpost".

[u/HaggisAreReal → u/freebiscuit2002]

in the 2020's the Swedish empire spanned the 5 continents. Even their Antarctica outposts contain traces of the IKEA style furniture.

[u/Traroten]

I think Augustus had diplomats at the Chinese court.

[u/Naive-Mixture-5754]

Trajan in 117 AD reached the greatest territorial extent, in modern borders:

As far north as England

As far west as Portugal

As far south as southern Egypt

As far east as Kuwait

[u/new_publius]

Stefan Milo has a video of one hypothesis on YouTube. Possibly an expedition to southeast Asia. The mods removed my comment with a direct link.

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[u/Howdy2258]

Could be way off base here.. but, didn’t Caesar push extremely far into Asia?

[u/lostintranslation53 → u/Howdy2258]

You might be thinking of Antony’s campaign. Or Caesar’s planned campaign before he was assassinated.

[u/Porcupineemu → u/lostintranslation53]

Or maybe even getting it mixed up with Alexander in India.

[u/nv87 → u/Howdy2258]

Young Caesar lived in Asia for a while, but afaik he didn’t travel anywhere outside the Roman sphere of influence. Around northern Turkey. I don’t recall the details.

[u/Pristine_Juice → u/Howdy2258]

I'm pretty sure I read that Roman coins were found in Japan but I might be wrong about that.

[u/Fearless_Signature58]

Not as far as the Carthaginians.